# Chapter 1. Introduction

The KDE Display Manager is a ``drop-in'' replacement for xdm, the X Display Manager and a little utility. kdmdesktop is to draw nice backgrounds. Kdm is superior to xdm in several ways:

- Kdm supports session arguments in a userfriendly way (xdm doesn't tell the user, which args it might generate).

- Kdm has an optional ``shutdown''-button (much like NT's login box).

- Kdm has an optional graphical view of users on the system (idea stolen from IRIX' login box).

- Kdm looks ways better than xdm ;-)

- Kdm can be configured with a graphical user interface (a part of the KDE control center)